Reviews > CDs

Liberation Through Hearing proclaims the title of Demdike Stare’s second release, included here as part of the Modern Love label’s triple-disc gatefold collection packaging the Northern England-based duo’s quixotic trilogy of EPs: Forest of Evil, the aforementioned Hearing and Voices of Dust. Totaling 170 minutes, the music that comprises the three titles included here, available previously as vinyl-only releases, indeed harbors a freeing sense of catharsis within its dark, spooky gothic drone that infuses elemental samples of early electronic experiments, library source music, freeform jazz, obscure industrial and foreign strains of rhythm from such embattled lands as Turkey, Iran, Eastern Europe and Pakistan.

But it is when master British crate digger Sean Canty and his partner, techno DJ Miles “MLZ” Whittaker, reprocess these flavors into something entirely new and unique through their intrinsic network of vintage analog equipment pieces that this journey into the outer perimeters of the auditory experience really brings you into another galaxy entirely. They create an uncomfortably warm alien strain of static, ambience and doom-like buzzing from where the pair’s otherworldly transmissions float in and out like hallucinogenic voices coming through an old CB radio jerry-rigged to an iPad. Over 40 minutes of previously unreleased music has been added to this trio of works, making Tryptych a definitive anthology for one of the still-gestating UK “witch house” movement’s most visionary acts. Fans of Throbbing Gristle, Basic Channel and Goblin do take note. Just make sure you have a light on when you listen…